“I know the theological answers, but do my blood and my pulse?”

“Dazed and disoriented, I looked up from the bright red blood pulsing out of my arm--into the fevered eyes of the six suddenly ravenous vampires.”

“I wait, with some impatience in my pulse, but no doubt in my breast.”

“Liv or love?" she asks. I brush her hair away from her neck and rest my hand there, feeling the beating of her pulse. "Either," I answer. "They're the same to me.”

“I was a boy, and I believed deeply in the sightedness of horses. I believed that there was nothing that they did not witness. I believed that to have a horse between my legs, to extend my pulse and blood and energy to theirs, enhanced my vision. Made of me a seer. I believed them to be the dappled, sorrel, roan, bay, black pupils in the eyes of God.”

“I stood there, my head bowed, my shoulders hunched. This is how it feels to be dragged from the cement shoes of a comfortable rut. The slow, steady strain on my legs became an excruciating amputation. My ankles pulled free from my feet. Bones snapped, cartilage tore, veins pulsed blood onto the soft brown clay of the yard. ”